Home of Richard Mitchell – XPO Game Festival Project Lead & Head of Tulsa Game Developers – Working to boost Tulsa, OK's tech & game dev industries. Former Reviews Editor at Joystiq (RIP). Member of the Oregon Trail Generation.

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Michael Pachter stood in his office. It was a large, well-appointed room, something any professional might aspire to. The shelves (mahogany) lining the northern wall were filled with books. Tomes on law and business, of course, but mostly books on the ever growing video game industry. Michael was proud of his collection, and prouder still that it wasn’t just for show. He had read them all, many of them multiple times.

He was less proud of his desk (oak). The piece was fine, exquisite in fact. The spiraling columns at each corner of the desk were hand-carved, as were the intricate, floral tendrils that framed the face of each drawer. The hanging, circular handles were bronze, tarnished on the edges but still gleaming in the middle where Michael’s hands regularly made contact. Each drawer would slide effortlessly and silently when opened, filled though they were with the tools of his trade – pens, legal pads and an honest-to-god accounting calculator, the kind that printed out its sums on honest-to-god paper. Continue reading “The Eastern Wall: A Short Story”

Yes, it’s been nearly two years since I’ve written a post here. I won’t bother you by saying I’m going to try to increase post frequency. I mean… I am, but let’s not make promises.

It’s been a rough and tumble two years, what with Joystiq collapsing without warning. Thankfully, I was scooped up by the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, and then by the Tulsa Community Foundation, to organize content for the XPO Game Festival here in Tulsa. I’ve been advising on its creation for several years now, and moving on to work on it full time has been amazing.

The show finally went off in September of 2016, and it was enormously gratifying. It seemed like everyone who attended, — visitors, exhibitors and speakers alike — had a great time. I had more than a few people personally tell me how grateful they were that XPO exists. I hope I can continue to earn that gratitude.

The other end of my job is helping to build and expand the tech and game development industries here in Tulsa. Last January, I started the Tulsa Game Developers group, which is now really starting to come into its own. It’s my hope in 2017 to see a TGD developed game make it onto the XPO show floor and onto a mass distribution platform. Here’s hoping!

Given all the professional changes in my life, I figured it was probably time to spruce up the ol’ website. I hope you like the new digs.

I first saved an empty draft of this post in April of 2014. I was approaching the beginning of my eighth year with Joystiq and reflecting on everything I’d done in what once seemed like an impossible career.

If you’ve been keeping up with the (admittedly insular) world of video game news, you’ll know that quite a lot has changed in the intervening months. Joystiq, as it was, no longer exists. I can’t say that I’m grateful for its closure, though that hasn’t blunted my gratitude for all that Joystiq has brought me. When I was 23, it enabled me to earn a living doing something I loved, a privilege that very few get to enjoy. The job was always just a job though. Certainly I loved it, but, as I’ve written elsewhere, I try not to define myself by what I do. It’s easy to conflate work, hobbies and passions with self-identity, but I think people are a much more appropriate measurement. In that regard, I am extraordinarily wealthy. Joystiq has introduced me to some of the most wonderful people a person could meet, many of whom I’m fortunate enough to call my friends. I’m eternally grateful to everyone I’ve worked with at Joystiq. Continue reading “8 years of gratitude”

Presented here are the notes I jotted down (well, typed) while playing Amy. Some I’ve deleted in retrospect, others I’ve expanded since beating the game, most are presented as-is. Think of it as a stream of consciousness way of expressing what I tried (and probably failed) to do with the 1000ish words in the review (which you can read over on Joystiq). Spoilers ahead, I suppose.

It was a fluke that I even found Joystiq at all. In 2006, I was working for a manufacturing company as a project scheduler, my first real job outside of college. My office was in the back corner of a double wide trailer stationed outside an empty warehouse north of downtown Tulsa. As you can imagine, the position wasn’t exactly thrilling, and I spent a considerable amount of time browsing the web. All the usual suspects were blocked by my office web filter, meaning I couldn’t cruise my usual standby, IGN, for gaming news. One site, however, wasn’t blocked: Joystiq.com.Continue reading “The coming tide”

A lot of things going on this week, leaving me ruminating on the current state of things. First thing’s first, this place is going to need a sprucing up. Can anyone out there recommend a sweet WordPress theme? Should I stick with this one? Tell me, internet. TELL ME!

When trying to work out the best way to describe Limbo, I keep coming back to Edvard Munch. I’ve always been fascinated with Munch, an artist most famous for painting The Scream. It’s his other works, however, that tend to stick with me, particularly his Madonna. As a work of art, Munch’s Madonna presents the viewer with seemingly disparate imagery, at once both alluring and disquieting. It’s dark, a little disturbing, and yet it’s also engaging and beautiful.

Alan Wake begins with a quote by Stephen King: "Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear." The line is spoken by the protagonist, novelist Alan Wake, and it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate opening. It’s a game spent in search of explanations, answers to the puzzling questions put forth by its narrative. It’s a very simple, effective hook — an author’s horror thriller is coming to life. The twist? He doesn’t remember writing it. Continue reading “Review: Alan Wake”

The first thing you should know about Bayonetta is that the story is entirely unimportant. It makes no sense. At all. Period. There’s something about two warring clans, one of witches and one of sages (Light vs. Dark — yada yada yada). There’s a “journalist” who inexplicably carries a grappling hook; an ancient god that’s being resurrected; and, at one point, there’s even a dance-off.

Now, forget about all of that. You’ll be skipping through it on your second playthrough anyway. And that’s really the point. If you like action games in the vein of Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden, you’ll probably start your second playthrough of Bayonetta exactly when I did: immediately after the first.Continue reading “Review: Bayonetta”

Whenever the ol’ Netflix queue runs out of TV episodes to ship — Annie and I just watched the first two seasons of Mad Men — I’m often at a loss. What movies should I rent? My first choice was Zombieland, but that’s not out yet. So what’s a consumer to do? The nice benefit of Netflix is that you can rent crap without feeling bad about it. If you rent a terrible movie, it’s not like you just blew $8 bucks on it. So, I picked the live-action version of Blood: The Last Vampire. To my incredible surprise, it’s actually pretty damned good.Continue reading “Blood: The Last Vampire”